How to Play Low Variance Slots Online

What the Label Means

Low variance, or low volatility, describes the shape of a game's results rather than their total: wins are expected to arrive more often and to be smaller than in a high variance game. In an online slot that shape is a property of the paytable and the reel maths.

Who Assigns the Label

The studio that built the game does. Push Gaming publishes a volatility rating on its own game pages and describes Bait 'n' Bank as a game with low volatility in its own game description. At the other end of its range, Evolution describes Big Time Gaming's titles including Bonanza, Extra Chilli, Lil Devil and Danger! High Voltage as having built that studio a reputation for high-volatility gameplay. No regulator or testing laboratory publishes a volatility figure, the labels are not standardised between studios, and a figure inferred from playing a game for a few hundred spins would carry no information, so the only reliable source for the label is the provider.

A Low Variance Label Is Not a Higher Return

Variance and return to player are separate properties. A low variance game can have a lower return to player than a high variance one, or a higher one; the label says only how the outcomes are spread. Great Britain's Gambling Commission is the regulator throughout this section, and what follows binds its licensees rather than every casino everywhere. Its consumer guidance states that a return-to-player percentage is an average achieved over a significant number of game plays rather than something achieved each time the game is played. Push Gaming states on its own game pages that the return to player of a title may vary per casino and that the figure can be read in the game's user panel and on the loading screen, so the figure that applies is the one shown in the game at the operator where it is played.

What Lower Variance Does and Does Not Change

A narrower spread of outcomes means a given balance is more likely to last for more spins before it is exhausted, because the size of individual losses and wins is smaller. It does not change the expected cost of playing, which is set by the game's return to player, and it does not make a game possible to come out ahead of over time. The Commission's guidance on random machines states that the odds of achieving a win in the current game remain constant and are not affected by wins or losses in previous games, and its technical standards prohibit adaptive behaviour, meaning interventions that change the probabilities of game outcomes during play.

Jackpot Contributions Change the Picture

Where a low variance game carries a progressive jackpot, part of each stake funds the jackpot pool and the shape of the game's results changes with it. The Commission's standards require that an explanation of the jackpot rules be clearly available before a customer commits to gamble, and the implementation guidance under that requirement adds that the rules shall describe how the jackpot is funded and what the start-up seed and any ceiling values are, and that the jackpot system's return-to-player percentage should be displayed, either as one combined game and progressive jackpot figure or broken down into the base game and the jackpot component. A player reading a volatility label on a jackpot-enabled game should also read that breakdown, because a label describing the base game does not describe the game with the jackpot in it.

What a Player Can Check

The Commission's standards require that information enabling an informed decision about the chances of winning is easily available before a customer commits to gamble, in the form of the house edge, the return to player percentage, or the probability of winning events occurring, and that content describing the potential prizes and payouts is available too. For a low variance game, the figures worth reading in that information are the return to player stated in the game's own help screen and the paytable, since a label on its own distinguishes nothing about what the game pays.